The Diverse Families bookshelf was created and funded through numerous grants. Due to lack of additional grants and the loss of key personnel, the project has come to an end. We have tremendously enjoyed creating this database and hope that it can help bring readers and books together.
This collection contains materials from the DIVerse Families bibliography organized by genre.
DIVerse Families is a comprehensive bibliography that demonstrates the growing diversity of families in the United States. This type of bibliography provides teachers, librarians, counselors, adoption agencies, children/young adults, and especially parents and grandparents needing to empower their children with materials that reflect their families.
Browse by Genre:
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Let's Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth with LGBTQ Parents
Tina Fakhrid-Deen
Offers children, teens, and adults with one or more gay, bisexual, or transgender parents advice on how they can deal with the challenges they might face, build healthy relationships with their parents, address discrimination, build a strong sense of self-esteem, and reduce the isolation and shame they might feel.
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Let's Talk About It: Divorce
Fred Rogers
Discusses healthy ways to deal with what children might be feeling about divorce.
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Let's Talk About Living with a Grandparent
Susan Kent
Discusses various reasons for living with a grandparent, the benefits of such an arrangement, and how to help out at home.
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Let's Talk About Living with a Single Parent
Elizabeth Weitzman
Examines potential problems and issues that might arise in several different kinds of single-parent homes.
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Let's Talk About Race
Julius Lester
The author introduces the concept of race as only one component in an individual's or nation's "story."
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Let's Talk About Racism
Bruce Sanders
Uses a question and answer format to explain racism and why some people are treated unfairly because of their skin color or religion and discusses ways of dealing with this issue.
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LGBTQ+ Athletes Claim the Field: Striving for Equality
Kirstin Cronn-Mills
In 2015, the world watched as soccer star Abby Wambach kissed her wife after the US women's World Cup victory. Milwaukee Brewers' minor league first baseman David Denson came out as gay. And Caitlyn (born Bruce) Jenner, an Olympic decathlete, came out as transgender. It hasn't always been this way. Many great athletes have stayed in the closet their whole lives, or at least until retirement. Social attitudes, institutional policies, and laws are slow to change, but they are catching up. Together, athletes, families, educators, allies, and fans are pushing for competitive equity so that every athlete, regardless of identity, can have the opportunity to play at their very best.
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LGBTQ Families: The Ultimate Teen Guide (It Happened to Me)
Eva Apelqvist
Children with LGBTQ parents are affected by all issues LGBTQ. This book is designed for inquisitive teens digging for answers about the many challenges they face. Apelqvist offers encouragement, insights, and resources to help them cope with and embrace the uniqueness of their family life.
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Lives Turned Upside Down: Homeless Children in Their Own Words and Photographs
Jim Hubbard
Two girls and two boys, ages nine to twelve, talk about their own personal experiences with homelessness and life in shelters.
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Love Makes a Family: Portraits of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Parents and their Families
Peggy Gillespie
This volume combines interviews and photographs to document the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered parents and their children. All of the family members speak candidly about their lives, their relationships and how they have dealt with the pressures of homophobia.
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Loving vs. Virginia: Lifting the Ban Against Interracial Marriage
Susan Dudley Gold
Describes the case of Loving v. Virginia including each side's claims, the outcome, and excerpts from the Supreme Court justices' decisions.
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Loving V. Virginia: Interracial Marriage
Karen Alonso
Explores the Supreme Court case that challenged and eventually overturned Virginia's law forbidding interracial marriages.
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March Book One
John Lewis and Andrew Aydin
This graphic novel is Congressman John Lewis' first-hand account of his lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. BookOne spans Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a climax on the steps of City Hall. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington D.C., and from receiving beatings from state troopers, to receiving the Medal of Freedom awarded to him by Barack Obama, the first African-American president.
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Marriage
Noel Merino
Presents extracts and analysis of four court decisions dealing with marriage, covering such issues as the polygamy, the right to marital privacy, interracial marriage, and same-sex marriage.
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Mixed Heritage: Your Source for Books for Children and Teens About Persons and Families of Mixed Racial, Ethnic, and/or Religious Heritage
Catherine Blakemore
Presents annotated lists of juvenile books on individuals and families with mixed ethnic, religious, and racial identities.
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Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids
Kip Fulbeck
From beloved writer and artist Kip Fulbeck, author of Part Asian, 100% Hapa, this timely collection of portraits celebrates the faces and voices of mixed-race children. At a time when 7 million people in the U.S. alone identify as belonging to more than one race, interest in issues of multiracial identity is rapidly growing. Overflowing with uplifting elements including charming images, handwritten statements from the children, first-person text from their parents, a foreword by Dr. Maya Soetoro-Ng (President Obama's sister), and an afterword by international star Cher (who is part Cherokee) this volume is an inspiring vision of the future.
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Multiethnic Teens and Cultural Identity
Barbara Cruz
Discusses the many issues facing teens of multiethnic descent, including discrimination and the search for ethnic identity in an unsympathetic culture.
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Multiracial Families
Julianna Fields
Describes the benefits and challenges multiracial families face in today's society, including cultural and religious differences, societal views on intermarriage, and multiracial adoption.
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Multiracial Families (Families Today)
Hilary W. Poole
Explores the benefits and challenges multiracial families face in today's society.
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My Daddy is in Jail
Janet Bender
My Daddy is in Jail is a long overdue resource for helping children cope with the incarceration of a loved one. It includes a read-aloud story discussion guide caregiver suggestions and optional small group counseling activities. With this book helping professionals and other caring adults will find themselves better equipped to provide information and support to these vulnerable children and their families.
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My New Family: A First Look at Adoption
Pat Thomas
Explains adoption, the feelings of insecurity that such a situation may cause, and the nature of biological parents, adoptive parents, and foster parents.
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My Parents are Getting Divorced: How to Keep It Together When Your Mom and Dad are Splitting Up
Florence Cadier and Melissa Day
Explains the feelings and questions shared by young adults whose parents are getting divorced, the changes that could occur, and how to deal with them. Includes hotline numbers.
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New Hands, New Life: Robots, Prostheses, and Innovation
Alex Mihailidis and Jan Andrysek
This book covers how advances in science and technology have made it possible for people with physical disabilities to overcome challenges.
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Of Many Colors: Portraits of Multiracial Families
Gigi Kaeser and Peggy Gillespie
Based on an award-winning photo exhibit, this collection of interviews and photographs documents the feelings and experiences of "thirty-nine families who have bridged the racial divide through interracial marriage or adoption."
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One April Morning: Children Remember the Oklahoma City Bombing
Nancy Lamb
Conversations with children from the Oklahoma City area about their feelings at the time of the bombing of the Federal Building and afterwards.